Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis (20 page)

She tensed, fork slipping from her fingers at the sudden blaring horn from a small car trapped behind the van, pinned in the lane by unforgiving traffic. Gulping down her unease, she stood, preparing to order the van to move.

Automatic gunfire shredded the calm as men on the other side of the van riddled the offending horn-bearing car with bullets. Diners hit the floor, sending tables, chairs, and food flying. The driver went for his weapons, an unblinking grin leveled off at Kirsten as though he did not want to spook her into running before he got a shot.

The woman in the car dove down into the passenger seat, her screams inaudible over the roaring chatter of small automatic weapons. Kirsten caught a glimpse of a dozen small braids in the back seat, each tipped with pink clip-on ribbons. As windshield peeled away and coolant fogged out of holes in the hood, Kirsten lunged towards the crash-proof wall, E-90 in hand. Two pulses melted through the side of the van as the driver brought his weapons to bear. Men screamed on the other side, the barrage of fire aimed for the car came to a halt.

Kirsten did not notice the driver in that second, too focused on her fear for the child in the tiny car being shot up for the crime of beeping at an idiot. In the two-second pause of gunfire, the screams of a woman and her daughter became clear. The second laser pulse had just melted through the van when the driver fired a burst from both weapons.

Dorian came flying through the side of the van, leaping into the air toward her as bullets whizzed around. A look of intense worry spread over his face, a snapshot preserved in adrenaline slow motion. He roared. She sensed his energy shift; when he hit her, he was close to solid. The effect was as though a sixty-pound plastic bag full of cold pudding landed on her. A rip of pain went through her left arm, between elbow and shoulder, as Dorian pulled her down. He slid over her, rolling through several tables.

She scooted up against the little wall, her left arm numb and disobedient. It just wanted to hang there doing nothing. Cold came through her uniform as her back pressed into the three-foot-tall plastisteel traffic-protection barrier, thick enough to stop bullets. The driver fired again, wounding several people searching for cover under tables.

Men screamed; an older woman cried out. Without thinking, Kirsten popped up and took a poorly-aimed shot at the driver. The streak of light missed him by an arm’s length left, igniting the front-end of the van. He swerved his automatic fire toward her as if watering the lawn; a thin line of pain scratched over her ribs on the left as she ducked. Kirsten used the tip of the E-90 to poke the emergency call button on her left forearm guard. The arm still would not move.

“Stay down!” Dorian screamed, as he ran to her side. “You’re shot through the arm, bone’s probably broken.”

She felt more angry than scared. “He’s gonna keep shooting people.”
Shock is wonderful.

The sound of the other men shuffling around the van preceded a few random bullets into the café.

At least they’re not shooting at the car… for the moment.

Dorian scowled. “I don’t know if I have enough strength to scare them; knocking you down about tapped me.”

She smiled, grimacing at the pain that only now radiated from her arm. Hot blood slid down her triceps; she blinked. Holding her pistol with her thighs, she pulled the stunrod off her belt and laid it across her lap.

“Nonlethal?” Dorian blinked. “Are you kidding?”

Kirsten’s sapphire eyes darkened. “There’s a kid in the car. I can’t just sit here.”

She grabbed the wound in her left bicep, screaming through clenched teeth and coating her hand with blood. As she smeared it over the baton, wisps of luminous white vapor coalesced around her hand in response to her power. The blood glowed for a second before it appeared to soak into the stunrod as if absorbed by a towel.

“Here, take it. Gimme a distraction.” She shifted to her knees, facing the wall. “I don’t use this trick too often ̓cause it needs blood and I’m a wimp.”

Dorian noticed the change in the weapon right away; she had bound it with astral energy. For a time, it would be tangible to both ghosts and mortals. He picked it up, awestruck at a physical object solid in his hands.

“Come on, man. Before I faint.”

A little voice in the car screamed, “Mommy!”

The desperation in the cry made Kirsten pop up again, facing four men with six submachine guns and a cheap assault rifle. Dorian ran at them. A trickle of gunfire went almost in Kirsten’s direction as they gawked at the floating stunrod coming at them. The one with the old rifle found it hilarious and laughed, right up until the thing hit him in the nose and sent him to the ground in convulsions.

Two more felt it a good idea to try and shoot the weaving eighteen-inch rod with the glowing blue tip, and started throwing bullets all over the place. Kirsten sighted on the driver, and put one pulse straight through his chest and into the van. Steam and smoke wisped out of his mouth and he went forward like a plank. Dorian set upon one of the others, not even using the stun electronics. Side of the knee, collarbone, head, chest twice, down for the count; plus more than a few bullets from his idiot friend still trying to shoot the baton.

Other cars swerved and crashed as errant fire went into traffic. Kirsten pivoted and fired at another of her attackers. Blood sprayed from two finger-sized holes, one on either side of his chest. He wheezed, dropped his guns, and doubled over, cradling the wound.

Kirsten forced herself to stand, one-arming her gun, still pointed at the man coughing up blood. Dorian applied the stunner again to the rifle-bearing ganger for good measure, and then smiled at the novelty of it all over again.

After kicking weapons out of reach, she backpedaled to the car while keeping the man in view. A series of quick rightward glances made her heart skip a beat. Both the woman and a girl of about ten in the back seat had taken hits. Blood spattered the interior of their little silver car. The girl lay on the floor, sweating and breathing in shallow gasps. The mother was out.

“Dorian, stun that last son of a bitch.”

She holstered her weapon, and found the door locked. Giving up, she clambered up the hood and slid through the destroyed windshield. The bones in her arm ground over each other as she tried to get a stimpak out of her left side belt case with her right arm.

“Officer, is my momma gonna die?”

Kirsten turned towards the voice, trapped by innocent brown eyes peering through a hanging curtain of tight braids. Finger trails of blood smeared over the chocolate-hued skin of the child’s cheek, staining the collar of a white shirt with big-headed caricatures of a boy band. Kirsten froze, staring at the girl, her right hand shaking with rage. She scowled at the men laid out on the road.

“Now you know why I did some things I’ve come to regret.” Dorian’s voice filtered in from behind. “If that girl was dead, would you finish off the survivors? Would you punish them?”

Dorian’s voice snapped her out of the daze. “No, sweetie, I think she’s gonna be okay. Where are you hit?”

The child sank into the seat, whining. Kirsten stifled the urge to scream in pain as she forced her hand into the awkward case, fingers scrabbling at a stimpak.

“My side.” The girl pulled her shirt up, revealing a graze just over the hip and a few nicks from flying glass.

Lot of blood, little danger.

Kirsten’s relief almost let the light-headed urge to faint from pain win. She handed the girl a stimpak, and gave her mother a second.

“Press the small end into your leg and hold it down until it stops hissing.”

Sirens approached as the child did as instructed.

“Agent Wren, please respond, what is your status?” The small silver bud in her left ear vibrated.

Oh, shit, how long have they been trying to comm me?

“Shots fired, numerous civilians wounded. I’m hit, but okay.”

Relief was palpable in the voice. “Roger that, Agent. Hold on, backup is one sector out.”

“I can hear them already.”

The woman moaned. The girl tried to climb forward, but Kirsten held her back.

“Medics are coming; your mom’s gonna be just fine.”

Kirsten held the girl’s hand until the area swarmed with Division 1 police as well as medtechs. Once the medics had the woman extricated from the car and took the girl, Kirsten staggered toward the confused ghost of the van’s driver. Another medic came up behind her with a gentle grasp on her unhurt arm.

“Come on, we got the civilians taken care of. Damn lucky thing you were here.”

“No, it isn’t.” Kirsten groaned at the pain caused by pulling away from him. “They were after me.”

“You’re losing a lot of blood. We need to get you to the facility.”

She all but dragged the medtech to the side of the van. “In a minute.”

“You, shithead.” She pointed with her good arm at the ghost.

The medic blinked. The new spirit lunged into a choking grab, but flew right through her.

“You’re a ghost, you jackass.” She turned to face him. “You do this for ha-has? Why me?”

He growled steam from his nostrils. Kirsten glared at him, surrounded by the shimmer of emergency lights dancing along plastisteel and glass. Traffic had ceased, the entire area cordoned off as a crime scene. More flashing red and blue lights came in overhead as additional patrol craft set up a hoverlane exclusion zone. The advert bots rerouted their path, but only because there was no one below interested in buying anything.

“Nothing to say?”

“Come on, Agent Wren. If you are hallucinating, we need to get moving.”

She let the medtech hold her, bracing some of her weight against him. “I’m not hallucinating.”

The dead ganger looked around, put his hand through the wall of the van, and stared. His murderous glower melted away to genuine fear as the reality of what happened to him sank in at last. Two patrolmen walked past, dispersing him into a cloud of mist for a second. When he re-formed, he took an angry step at Kirsten, pointing.

“What the fuck did you do to me?”

She would have folded her arms, but it was difficult to act tough in that much pain; not to mention one of her arms did not work. It was also difficult to be menacing while the only thing keeping her on her feet was a dark-skinned man in white. “What did you try to do to me?”

“We’z ̓sposed to kill you.”

She smiled a saccharin grin. “Well, there you have it.”

“I’m dead?” He looked at the street, through transparent hands, and back at her. “You bitch!”

A ripple of anger ran down her back.
What balls. This asshole tries to kill me and is angry at me?
She narrowed her eyes, wanting
them
to pay him a visit, calling out into the Aether.

“Did you just decide to shoot at me because I was a cop in some kind of initiation? Or are you really just
that
damn stupid?”

The sense of mood changed, darkened. Dorian wandered back to the patrol craft, whistling. As the shadows grew more intense, he dissipated into his car. The dead ganger coughed a cloud of smoke and looked around, addled by the approach of dread he could not see.

“Someone gave us a pile of swag and an image cap of your face. More swag if we got you.”

“Did you get a name?”

“Yeah, but I don’t remember it. Dude had a girl’s name, though.”

“Rene?” She slipped as strength left her legs.

The medic hauled her up. “Okay, that’s it. You may outrank me, but I am still a medtech. You’re about to faint. Whatever you’re doing is over.” He turned to his right. “Jen, need a slab, stat.”

“Yeah. Renee. It’s a girl’s―”

His answer twisted into a primal scream as the Harbingers coalesced around him.

lacid warmth surrounded Kirsten. A street full of flashing lights, loud voices, moaning citizens, and pain had become quiet calm. She remembered Kendall, the medic, holding her hand inside the MedVan. She enjoyed the weightlessness of the breathable gel, savored the lack of pain, but did not much care for being suspended nude in a floor-to-ceiling tank of slime with two men outside.